■ TRANSPORT
Four injured in crash
A tour bus carrying 15 passengers -- 13 of them tourists from Hong Kong -- hit an electric pole in a scenic mountainous area in Chiayi County, leaving three men and one woman injured, police said on Monday. A Taiwanese tour guide sustained the most serious injuries. The tour guide and three tourists from Hong Kong were all conscious and none were in critical condition, police said. Two of the tourists have been discharged from the hospital after treatment and rejoined the tour group. The tour guide and one tourist remained in hospital for observation. The bus was touring Alishan (阿里山) when the accident occurred, police said, adding that visibility at the time was very poor because of heavy fog. Police were still investigating the cause of the accident.
■ SOCIETY
Youngsters impulse buyers
Nearly half of Taiwanese youngsters succumb to impulse-buying, although more than 70 percent said it was worthwhile to think it over before making a decision, a recent survey by ACNeilson Taiwan Ltd on behalf of Citibank Taiwan and the Taiwan Women's Rescue Foundation showed. The survey obtained answers from 1,742 high school students around the country from Sept. 18 to Jan. 19. The results showed that 45 percent of respondents acknowledged they would buy on the spur of the moment. Of the girls surveyed, 53 percent admitted to impulse buying, compared with 34 percent of the boys. The survey also found that 84 percent of respondents believed they should be held responsible for their behavior. Meanwhile, 90 percent said they understood that a bad credit history would make it difficult to get bank loans in future.
■ TRANSPORT
Baseball cards on sale soon
Taipei Smart Card Corp will begin selling a new set of four EasyCards featuring two notable Taiwan-born baseball stars playing in Major League Baseball, a company executive said yesterday. The players are the New York Yankees' right-handed pitcher Wang Chien-ming (王建民) and the Los Angeles Dodgers' left-handed pitcher Kuo Hong-chih (郭泓志). The new cards will be sold at 24 7-Eleven stores and the Taipei Metro Souvenir Shop at Taipei Main Station, the executive said. He said the company will issue only 5,000 sets of the new cards, with each set costing NT$1,500. People interested in the new cards can visit www.tscc.com.tw for more information.
■ SOCIETY
Abuse procedures clarified
Township and borough officials will be fined up to NT$30,000 (US$9,120) if they fail to report child abuse cases that they are aware of, the Children's Bureau announced yesterday. The new policy is part of the bureau's clarification of duties for medical personnel, social workers, educators, police and justice officials when they encounter cases of child abuse. The measure is part of a new child abuse prevention bill drafted by the bureau, an interior ministry release said, adding that it would be discussed further in a Cabinet meeting next month before being passed and submitted to the legislature for review. The bill identifies low-income and single-parent families, families with a history of drug and alcohol abuse or mental illness and families whose grandparents raise their grandchildren or that have experienced the death of a parent or parents, as "high-risk" families in which abuse is more likely to occur.
■ GOVERNMENT
Passport seminar held
Scores of foreign specialists on electronic passports attended a seminar sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday to offer tips on Taiwan's e-passport plan. The ministry organized the Taiwan ePassport Forum in cooperation with the Asia Pacific Smart Card Association in preparation for its issuance of e-passports starting next year. Electronic passport specialists from Germany, France, Australia and several other countries delivered speeches at the forum and exchanged views and technological know-how with local software and hardware makers. Stressing that the issuance of an e-passport will be an integral part of a passport renewal process to stamp out forgery and other fraud, an official from the ministry's Bureau of Consular Affairs said the program would not affect existing passport application procedures.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods